As if the extraordinary quantity – almost five hundred – of Vivaldi's concertos was not sufficient, Vivaldi scholarship still frets over the ones that got away: the fish that escaped the net. The extent of the lost music of this composer remains a highly potent topic, deeply fascinating not only because new discoveries continue to be unearthed (in 2005, for example: the Dixit Dominus, rv807, formerly misattributed to Galuppi) but also because it is certain that Vivaldi composed significantly more music than might be inferred from the impressively great total of the surviving works. He must have composed, for instance, more concertos in the early years of his career, c1703–1715, than the few that have come down to us. Moreover, the paucity of surviving autographs of concertos from the mid-1730s onwards, in stark contrast to the number of those extant from the 1720s and early 1730s, strongly hints that Vivaldi may have increasingly sold off concerto scores on a piecemeal basis, probably in growing need of funds late in his career. The English scholar and traveller Edward Holdsworth, having met and spoken with the composer in Venice in 1733, reported that Vivaldi ‘expects a guinea for ev'ry piece’, a price that Holdsworth judged to be exorbitant (see Michael Talbot, ‘Vivaldi's “Manchester” Sonatas’, Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 104 (1977–1978), 21). Doubtless wealthier tourists and distinguished visitors to Venice were not so parsimonious; the purchase of a concerto manuscript, whether an existing one or a freshly made copy, as a souvenir of the famous Vivaldi must not have been uncommon.

Enter Andrew Woolley and his discovery, in 2010, of the Flute Concerto in D minor, rv431a, preserved in a manuscript (four separate parts) in the National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, among the family papers of the Marquesses of Lothian. This became something of a cause célèbre, with announcements in the media after the music had been authenticated, not so much because yet another concerto could be added to the hundreds of others but because this was one that set itself apart with one of Vivaldi's curiously eccentric titles: Il Gran Mogol. Indeed, this was a fairly big fish that had slipped through the net a long time ago: since the early 1980s Vivaldi scholars had known, but only from mere references in an eighteenth-century catalogue, about the former existence of four lost flute concertos with geographical titles (La Francia, La Spagna, L'Inghilterro and Il Gran Mogol), which thus seemed tantalizingly interesting as a themed set of four or component works in a larger set. In this context, Il Gran Mogol surely alludes to India or the empire of the Mogul dynasty, not to its ruler. In Vivaldi circles Woolley's discovery produced general rejoicing that the near-mythical Il Gran Mogol was now proved to be tangibly real as actual music, and encouraged renewed hope that this work's equally precious companions and other lost compositions will be found if we stay patient and manage to live long enough. The fruits of the discovery quickly followed: (a) Woolley's extensive article that examines the source, its background and the issues concerning text and repertory that it provokes (‘An Unknown Flute Concerto by Vivaldi in Scotland’, Studi vivaldiani 10 (2010), 3–37); (b) Woolley's critical edition of the music, the subject of the present review; (c) the modern premiere of the work, performed by La Serenissima in Edinburgh on 26 January 2011; and (d) the first commercial recording, released by the same ensemble in 2011.

Il Gran Mogol, rv431a in D minor, a key rarely chosen for the transverse flute in the early eighteenth century, is a fine work well worth performing. It's a case made all the more interesting because the high degree of textual authority that deserves to be attributed to rv431a stems not from the Edinburgh source itself but almost entirely from its relationship with an incomplete autograph (lacking the central slow movement) of a cognate version, the title-less rv431 in E minor. The Edinburgh manuscript, after all, is incomplete, lacking the second violin part, and of uncertain provenance (seemingly Italian or French), with no identifiable direct connection to the composer's sphere of activity. Although it dates probably from the mid-1730s, its text is notated in an unidentified scribal hand not hitherto known from Vivaldi sources. Were it not for the existence of the autograph of rv431, one would be slow to rely on a copy-manuscript of this type or dare to claim its music (or an outright peculiarity such as its unusual tonic key) to be authoritative. It belongs, in the Edinburgh collection, alongside parts for three other concertos: one anonymous and one each by William Babel and Jean-Daniel Braun. In the Preface to the present edition and at greater length in his article, Woolley convincingly argues that these concertos were collected or otherwise acquired, possibly at various locations on the Grand Tour, by Lord Robert Kerr, second son of William Kerr, third Marquess of Lothian. Lord Robert, who would later die tragically young at the Battle of Culloden (1746) as an officer fighting on the Hanoverian side against the Jacobite forces, is known to have possessed, by 1732, music books and a flute and to have received music lessons. Woolley offers, in addition, a complementary hypothesis: that Lord Robert may have acquired these flute compositions through his likely association in the 1730s with the composer and flautist Francesco Barsanti, employed by the Edinburgh Musical Society, of which Lord Robert became a member in 1740.

The incomplete autograph score of rv431, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria, Turin (volume Giordano 31, fols 266–271), is thus of huge benefit. Despite the difference in key between the two versions, the autograph proves beyond any doubt the authenticity and reliability of the Edinburgh version (rv431a) and enables the accurate reconstruction, with hardly any difficulty, of its missing second violin part. In turn, the Edinburgh manuscript is of reciprocal benefit to rv431, for its central slow movement offers one plausible solution (among others) for the equivalent movement missing from the autograph, where Vivaldi simply wrote the instruction ‘Grave Sopra il Libro come stà’ (almost certainly meaning ‘base the slow movement on the original as it stands’). Indeed, Woolley's close study of the readings in both sources establishes that rv431 in E minor is in fact the later of the two versions, adapted from music originally in D minor: that original was presumably a subsequently lost autograph score of rv431a with its title Il Gran Mogol intact, and presumably the exemplar from which other copies were derived, including the text that was transmitted to the Edinburgh manuscript. Since the autograph of rv431 is the key that unlocks all the doors, it was wise of the editor and laudable of the publisher to present both rv431a and rv431 together in the one volume. Indeed, this volume respects an important principle that I would recommend as best practice for any publisher to observe: that, where it is practicable to do so, distinct versions of a composition should be published together, not in separate volumes or at separate times, and that alternative versions need to be included as main text rather than merely mentioned in the supplementary content of an edition.

As is the case with the many fine editions of baroque repertoire that have been issued since the 1990s by this excellent publishing house, Edition HH, Woolley's volume consists of well prepared and carefully proofread text, beautifully presented in a layout convenient to performers and scholars alike. The Introduction, a prefatory essay covering in admirable detail all the issues raised by the sources as well as matters of editorial policy and the methodology for reconstruction, appears in both English and German, with some facsimile illustrations of pages from the two manuscripts. The main text is clean, entirely free from extraneous markings, allowing performers to interpret the music for themselves, and is complemented by the usual kind of rigorous listing of readings in the Textual Notes located at the end of the volume. The publisher's website lists separate parts for sale or hire, and an arranged version of the score for flute and keyboard reduction, in addition to the full score under review here. The one flaw I would draw attention to is the lack of a specimen written-out realization of the continuo part, for even some professional performers, besides many otherwise very competent amateurs, are not able with adequate fluency to realize extempore without any guidance – especially when the original basso part is only sparsely figured (rv431) or not figured at all (rv431a).